DescriptionAlbert Einstein once wrote, "My particular ability does not lie in mathematical calculation, but rather in visualizing effects, possibilities, and consequences." Today, the web, cloud, virtual reality, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and other evolving technologies are increasing the stream of data in all areas, thus the need for “visualizing effects, possibilities, and consequences", is necessary to reduce the volume to a manageable size and focus on those crucial data points. With the advent of such “Big Data”, businesses are now so overwhelmed by these data cascading into and through their business operations. They are faced with major challenges in processing and analyzing data. Furthermore, auditors will need to rely on more advance techniques throughout the audit cycle since traditional techniques are becoming less and less effective and efficient in the Big Data environment. Data visualization is one solution that presents information in ways that engages the use of the human’s cognitive and visual abilities. It is the process of converting raw data into some visual form. It helps by shifting the cognitive load coupled with the understanding of Big Data, to the human perceptual system through graphics and visuals. Data visualization helps auditors gain better insights, draw better conclusions and ultimately improve the audit process. This dissertation will contribute to the existing literature by exploring the application of various data visualization techniques in auditing. Despite being widely used in other fields such as medicine and engineering, the auditing profession has been behind in their usage of data visualization, and this dissertation will attempt to bridge this gap. Specifically, it will look into and analyze the existing literature and their usage of data visualization techniques to shed light and understand its current evolution and its future trend. It will also contribute by providing two illustrations of how exploratory and explanatory data visualization can be applied in the audit profession. The first will demonstrate how it can be applied in the audit planning stage, where little is known about the data. The second will illustrate how an expert visual dashboard can be applied in the area of procurement cards for the purpose of audit monitoring and control.